Fin de la saga de Dave

I’ve wanted to make a book of all my past comic strips along with some new ones, but looking back at the older material there was a problem: I hadn’t done three-panel strips in at least a dozen years. I’d been married, waited tables, had a stalker, divorced, broke as fuck, been a teacher, met my other half, become a delivery driver, gotten remarried, become a dad twice — etc., etc., etc.

So nothing from the old strips felt relevant anymore. More importantly, I didn’t want to publish a comic with people in it who are no longer in my life. Comics don’t pay enough to get sued. 😒

Then came the problem of how to restart the strips — how to reintroduce people to me and to where my life is now. I figured it’d be like explaining your present-day situation to someone you hadn’t seen or talked to in years. I was racking my brain to find someone who would be funny and whom I legitimately hadn’t seen or talked to in a while… and then, like a lightning bolt, it hit me.

I hadn’t seen or talked to my biological father in almost — what, nine years? PERFECT! I ran the idea by some other people I think are funny; they laughed but also said, “It’s pretty funny, but pretty mean — what if he sees this?”

Poppycock to that nonsense, I say. He’s taken zero interest in me and, more upsettingly, my kids’ lives for almost a decade, so fuck that guy. Dave it shall be!

Gentlemen: be a fucking dad or grandpa to your kids and their kids. Don’t be a Dave.

The last panel has two things that tickle my stupid brain seeing them brought to life. First, the background for all of these is Sacramento’s dying local mall, Arden Fair, and in this last panel I’ve put in “Amador’s Hour of Flavor.” That’s an inside joke about an extended family member on his deathbed who, when given water, became enraged at the beverage choice and screamed, “I LIKE FLAVOR!”

The second thing that makes me really laugh is something I’ve unknowingly done my kids’ entire lives. Whenever they asked who someone was, what something was called, what we should name something, or where we were going, I always replied with something like “We should call it Dave” or “We’re going to see Dave.” Neither of my kids actually knew or remembered that their supposed grandfather’s name is fucking Dave. I fucking died when they found this out.

And now….The Dave Saga is over.